READING

READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage 1
below.

MULTITASKING DEBATE

Can you do them at the same time?

Talking on the phone while driving isn’t the only situation where we’re worse at multitasking
than we might like to think we are. New studies have identified a bottleneck in our brains that
some say means we are fundamentally incapable of true multitasking. If experimental findings
reflect real-world performance, people who think they are multitasking are probably just
underperforming in all – or at best, all but one – of their parallel pursuits. Practice might improve
your performance, but you will never be as good as when focusing on one task at a time.

The problem, according to René Marois, a psychologist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville,

Tennessee, is that there’s a sticking point in the brain. To demonstrate this, Marois devised an
experiment to locate it. Volunteers watch a screen and when a particular image appears, a red
circle, say, they have to press a key with their index finger. Different coloured circles require
presses from different fingers. Typical response time is about half a second, and the volunteers
quickly reach their peak performance. Then they learn to listen to different recordings and
respond by making a specific sound. For instance, when they hear a bird chirp, they have to say
“ba”; an electronic sound should elicit a “ko”, and so on. Again, no problem. A normal person
can do that in about half a second, with almost no effort.

C
The trouble comes when Marois shows the volunteers an image, and then almost immediately
plays them a sound. Now they’re flummoxed. “If you show an image and play a sound at the
same time, one task is postponed,” he says. In fact, if the second task is introduced within the
half-second or so it takes to process and react to the first, it will simply be delayed until the first
one is done. The largest dual-task delays occur when the two tasks are presented simultaneously;
delays progressively shorten as the interval between presenting the tasks lengthens.

There are at least three points where we seem to get stuck, says Marois. The first is in simply
identifying what we’re looking at. This can take a few tenths of a second, during which time we
are not able to see and recognise a second item. This limitation is known as the “attentional
blink”: experiments have shown that if you’re watching out for a particular event and a second
one shows up unexpectedly any time within this crucial window of concentration, it may register
in your visual cortex but you will be unable to act upon it. Interestingly, if you don’t expect the
first event, you have no trouble to respond to the second. What exactly causes the attentional
blink is still a matter for debate.

A second limitation is in our short-term visual memory. It’s estimated that we can keep track of
about four items at a time, fewer if they are complex. This capacity shortage is thought to
explain, in part, our astonishing inability to detect even huge changes in scenes that are otherwise
identical, so-called “change blindness”. Show people pairs of near-identical photos – say, aircraft
engines in one picture have disappeared in the other – and they will fail to spot the differences.
Here again, though, there is disagreement about what the essential limiting factor really is. Does
it come down to a dearth of storage capacity, or is it about how much attention a viewer is
paying?

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A third limitation is that choosing a response to a stimulus – braking when you see a child in the
road, for instance, or replying when your mother tells you over the phone that she’s thinking of
leaving your dad – also takes brainpower. Selecting a response to one of these things will delay
by some tenths of a second your ability to respond to the other. This is called the “response
selection bottleneck” theory, first proposed in 1952.

But David Meyer, a psychologist at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, doesn’t buy the
bottleneck idea. He thinks dual-task interference is just evidence of a strategy used by the brain
to prioritise multiple activities. Meyer is known as something of an optimist by his peers. He has
written papers with titles like “Virtually perfect time-sharing in dual-task performance:
Uncorking the central cognitive bottleneck”. His experiments have shown that with enough
practice – at least 2000 tries – some people can execute two tasks simultaneously as competently
as if they were doing them one after the other. He suggests that there is a central cognitive
processor that coordinates all this and, what’s more, he thinks it used discretion: sometimes it
chooses to delay one task while completing another.

Marois agrees that practice can sometimes erase interference effects. He has found that with just
1 hour of practice each day for two weeks, volunteers show a huge improvement at managing
both his tasks at once. Where he disagrees with Meyer is in what the brain is doing to achieve
this. Marois speculates that practice might give us the chance to find less congested circuits to
execute a task – rather like finding trusty back streets to avoid heavy traffic on main roads –
effectively making our response to the task subconscious. After all, there are plenty of examples
of subconscious multitasking that most of us routinely manage: walking and talking, eating and
reading, watching TV and folding the laundry.

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It probably comes as no surprise that, generally speaking, we get worse at multitasking as we
age. According to Art Kramer at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign, who studies
how ageing affects our cognitive abilities, we peak in our 20s. Though the decline is slow
through our 30s and on into our 50s, it is there; and after 55, it becomes more precipitous. In one
study, he and his colleagues had both young and old participants do a simulated driving task
while carrying on a conversation. He found that while young drivers tended to miss background
changes, older drivers failed to notice things that were highly relevant. Likewise, older subjects
had more trouble paying attention to the more important parts of a scene than young drivers.

It’s not all bad news for over-55s, though. Kramer also found that older people can benefit from
the practice. Not only did they learn to perform better, but brain scans also showed that
underlying that improvement was a change in the way their brains become active. While it’s
clear that practice can often make a difference, especially as we age, the basic facts remain
sobering. “We have this impression of an almighty complex brain,” says Marois, “and yet we
have very humbling and crippling limits.” For most of our history, we probably never needed to
do more than one thing at a time, he says, and so we haven’t evolved to be able to. Perhaps we
will in future, though. We might yet look back one day on people like Debbie and Alun as
ancestors of a new breed of true multitaskers.

Questions 1-5

The Reading Passage has ten paragraphs A-J.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter A-J, in boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet.

1. A theory explained delay happens when selecting one reaction

2. Different age group responds to important things differently

3. Conflicts happened when visual and audio element emerge simultaneously

4. An experiment designed to demonstrates the critical part of the brain for multitasking

5. A viewpoint favors the optimistic side of multitasking performance

Questions 6-8

Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.

Write your answers in boxes 6-8 on your answer sheet.

6. Which one is correct about the experiment conducted by René Marois?

A. participants performed poorly on the listening task solely

B. volunteers press a different key on different color
C. participants need to use different fingers on the different colored object
D. they did a better fob on Mixed image and sound information

7. Which statement is correct about the first limitation of Marois’s experiment?

A. “attentional blink” takes about ten seconds

B. lag occurs if we concentrate on one object while the second one appears
C. we always have trouble in reaching the second one
D. first limitation can be avoided by certain measures

8. Which one is NOT correct about Meyer’s experiments and statements?

A. just after failure in several attempts can people execute dual-task

B. Practice can overcome dual-task interference
C. Meyer holds a different opinion on Marois’s theory
 D. an existing processor decides whether to delay another task or not

Questions 9-13

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?

In boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet, write

YES. if the statement agrees with the views of the writer

NO. if the statement contradicts the views of the writer

NOT if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

GIVEN.

9. The longer gap between two presenting tasks means shorter delay toward the second one.

10. Incapable of human memory cause people to sometimes miss the differences when presented
two similar images.

11. Marois has a different opinion on the claim that training removes the bottleneck effect.

12. Art Kramer proved there is a correlation between multitasking performance and genders

13. The author doesn’t believe that the effect of practice could bring any variation.

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-27, which are based on Reading Passage 2
below.
 A GUIDE TO WOMENOMICS

In rich countries, girls now do better at school than boys, more women are getting university
degrees than men arc, and females arc filling most new jobs. Arguably, women are now the most
powerful engine of global growth. In 1950, only one third of American women of working age
had a paid job. Today two thirds do, and women make up almost half of America’s workforce.
Since 1950, men’s employment rate has slid by 12 percentage points, to 77%. In fact, almost
everywhere more women are employed and the percentage of men with jobs has fallen –
although in some countries, the feminisation of the workplace still has far to go: in Italy and
Japan, women’s share of jobs is still 40% or less.

The increase in female employment in developed countries has been aided by a big shift in the
type of jobs on offer. Manufacturing work, traditionally a male preserve, has declined, while jobs
in services have expanded. This has reduced the demand for manual labour and put the sexes on
a more equal footing. In the developing world, too, more women now have paid jobs. In the
emerging East Asian economics, forever)’ 100 men in the labour force there are now 83 women,
higher even than the average in OECD countries. Women have been particularly important to the
success of Asia’s export industries, typically accounting for 60- 80% of jobs in many export
sectors, such as textiles and clothing.

Of course, it is misleading to talk of women’s “entry” into the workforce. Besides formal
employment, women have always worked in the home, looking after children, cleaning or
cooking, but because this is unpaid, it is not counted in the official statistics. To some extent, the
increase in female paid employment has meant fewer hours of unpaid housework. However, the
value of housework has fallen by much less than the time spent on it, because of the increased
productivity afforded by dishwashers, washing machines and so forth. Paid nannies and cleaners
employed by working women now also do some work that used to belong in the non-market
economy.

The increase in female employment has also accounted for a big chunk of global growth in
recent decades. GDP growth can come from three sources: employing more people; using more
capital per worker, or an increase in the productivity of labour and capital due to new
technology’. Since 1970, women have filled two new jobs for every’ one taken by a man.
Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that the employment of extra women has not only
added more to GDP than new jobs for men but has also chipped in more than either capital
investment or increased productivity. Carve up the world’s economic growth a different way and
another surprising conclusion emerges: over the past decade or so, the increased employment of
women in developed economies has contributed much more to global growth. Women are
becoming more important in the global marketplace not just as workers, but also as consumers,
entrepreneurs, managers and investors. Women have traditionally done most of the household
shopping, but now they have more money of their own to spend. Surveys suggest that women
make perhaps 80% of consumers’ buying decisions – from health care and homes to furniture
and food.

Women’s share of the workforce has a limit. In America it has already stalled. However, there
will still be a lot of scope for women to become more productive as they make better use of their
qualifications. At school, girls consistently get better grades and in most developed countries,
well over half of all university degrees are now being awarded to women. In America 140
women enrol in higher education each year for every 100 men; in Sweden the number is as high
as 150. (There are, however, only 90 female Japanese students for every 100 males.) In years to
come, better educated women will take more of the top jobs. At present, for example, in Britain
more women than men train as doctors and lawyers, but relatively few arc leading surgeons or
partners in law firms. The main reason why women still get paid less on average than men is not
that they are paid less for the same occupations, such as nursing and teaching. This pattern is
likely to change.

Making better use of women’s skills is not just a matter of fairness. Plenty of studies suggest that
it is good for business, too. Women account for only 7% of directors on the worlds corporate
boards – 15% in America, but less than 1% in Japan. Yet a study by Catalyst, a consultancy,
found that American companies with more women in senior management jobs earned a higher
return on equity than those with fewer women at the top. This might be because mixed teams of
men and women are better than single-sex groups at solving problems and spotting external
threats. Studies have also suggested that women are often better than men at building teams and
communicating.

In poor countries too, the underutilisation of women stunts economic growth. A study last year
by the World Economic Forum found a clear correlation between sex equality (measured by
economic participation, education, health and political empowerment) and GDP per head.
Correlation does not prove the direction of causation. However, other studies also suggest that
inequality between the sexes harms long-term growth. In particular, there is strong evidence that
educating girls boosts prosperity. It is probably the single best investment that can be made in the
developing world. Not only are better educated women more productive, but they raise healthier,
better educated children. There is huge potential to raise income per head in developing
countries, where fewer girls go to school than boys. More than two thirds of the world’s illiterate
adults are women.

It is sometimes argued that it is short-sighted to get more women into paid employment. The
more women go out to work, it is said, the fewer children there will be and the lower growth will
be in the long run. Yet the facts suggest otherwise. Data shows that countries with high female
labour participation rates, such as Sweden, tend to have the decline in fertility has been greatest
in several countries where female employment is low.

Questions 14-17

The text has 8 paragraphs (A – H). Which paragraph does each of the following headings best
fit?

14. New producers, new consumers

15. More work, fewer children?

16. A better educated workforce

17. Women in new, expanding industries

Questions 18-22

According to the text, FIVE of the following statements are true. Write the corresponding letters
in answer boxes 18 to 22 in any order.

A. A higher percentage of Italian women have jobs than Japanese women.

B. More women than men work in Asia’s textile industries.
C. The value of housework is not included in official statistics.
D. Research shows that men make more purchasing decisions than women.
E. Most surgeons in Britain are women.
F. Firms with more women in senior management offer higher investment returns.
G. Most illiterate people in the world are women.
H. Some people think that lower birth rates lead to lower economic growth.
Questions 23-26

According to the information given in the text, choose the correct answer from the choices given.

23. Since 1950, the percentage of

A. American women with jobs has increased.

B. American men with jobs has decreased.
C. Japanese and Italian women with jobs has remained stable.

24. Economics can get bigger by

A. increasing the size of companies.

B. giving shares to workers.
C. using more advanced technology.

25. Mixed teams of male and female managers are thought to be better at

A. building teams.
B. solving problems.
C. communicating.

26. Research by the World Economic Forum shows that

A. sex equality leads to higher GDP.

B. there is a connection between sex equality and GDP.
C. higher education leads to higher GDP.

READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 28-40, which are based on Reading Passage 3
below.
 THE HISTORY OF BUILDING TELEGRAPH LINES

The idea of electrical communication seems to have begun as long ago as 1746 when about 200
monks at a monastery in Paris arranged themselves in a line over a mile long, each holding ends
of 25 ft iron wires. The abbot, also a scientist, discharged a primitive electrical battery into the
wire, giving all the monks a simultaneous electrical shock. “This all sounds very silly, but is in
fact extremely important because, firstly, they all said ‘ow’ which showed that you were sending
a signal right along the line; and, secondly, they all said ‘ow’ at the same time, and that meant
that you were sending the signal very quickly, “explains Tom Standage, author of the Victorian
Internet and technology editor at the Economist. Given a more humane detection system, this
could be a way of signaling over long distances.

With wars in Europe and colonies beyond, such a signaling system was urgently needed. All
sorts of electrical possibilities were proposed, some of them quite ridiculous. Two Englishmen,
William Cooke and Charles Wheatstone came up with a system in which dials were made to
point at different letters, but that involved five wires and would have been expensive to
construct.

Much simpler was that of an American, Samuel Morse, whose system only required a single wire
to send a code of dots and dashes. At first, it was imagined that only a few highly skilled
encoders would be able to use it but it soon became clear that many people could become
proficient in Morse code. A system of lines strung on telegraph poles began to spread in Europe
and America.

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The next problem was to cross the sea. Britain, as an island with an empire, led the way. Any
such cable to be insulated and the first breakthrough came with the discovery that a rubber-like
latex from a tropical tree on the Malay peninsula could do the trick. It was called gutta-percha.
The first attempt at a cross channel cable came in 1850. With thin wire and thick installation, it
floated and had to be weighed down with a lead pipe.

It never worked well as the effect of water on its electrical properties was not understood, and it
is reputed that a French fisherman hooked out a section and took it home as a strange new form
of seaweed. The cable was too big for a single boat so two had to start in the middle of the
Atlantic, join their cables and sail in opposite directions. Amazingly, they succeeded in 1858, and
this enabled Queen Victoria to send a telegraph message to President Buchanan. However, the
98-word message took more than 19 hours to send and a misguided attempt to increase the speed
by increasing the voltage resulted in the failure of the line a week later.

By 1870, a submarine cable was heading towards Australia. It seemed likely that it would come
ashore at the northern port of Darwin from where it might connect around the coast to
Queensland and New South Wales. It was an undertaking more ambitious than spanning an
ocean. Flocks of sheep had to be driven with the 400 workers to provide food. They needed
horses and bullock carts and, for the parched interior, camels. In the north, tropical rains left the
teams flooded. In the centre, it seemed that they would die of thirst. One critical section in the
red heart of Australia involved finding a route through the McDonnell mountain range and the
finding water on the other side.

The water was not only essential for the construction team. There had to be telegraph repeater
stations every few hundred miles to boost the signal and the staff obviously had to have a supply
of water. Just as one mapping team was about to give up and resort to drinking brackish water,
some aboriginals took pity on them. Altogether, 40,000 telegraph poles were used in the
Australian overland wire. Some were cut from trees. Where there were no trees, or where
termites ate the wood, steel poles were imported.

On Thursday, August 22, 1872, the overland line was completed and the first messages could be
sent across the continent; and within a few months, Australia was at last in direct contact with
England via the submarine cable, too. The line remained in service to bring news of the Japanese
attack on Darwin in 1942. It could cost several pounds to send a message and it might take
several hours for it to reach its destination on the other side of the globe, but the world would
never be the same again. Governments could be in touch with their colonies. Traders could send
cargoes based on demand and the latest prices. Newspapers could publish news that had just
happened and was not many months old.

Questions 27-32

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?

In boxes 27-32 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE. if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE. if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN. If there is no information on this

27. In the research of French scientists, the metal lines were used to send a message.
28. Abbots gave the monks an electrical shock at the same time, which constitutes the
exploration of the long-distance signaling.

29. Using Morse Code to send message need to simplify the message firstly.

30. Morse was a famous inventor before he invented the code

31. The water is significant to early telegraph repeater on the continent.

32. US Government offered fund to the 1st overland line across the continent.

Questions 33-40

Answer the questions below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/ OR A NUMBER from the passage for each
answer.

Write your answers in boxes 33-40 on your answer sheet.

Why is the disadvantage for Charles Wheatstone’s telegraph system to fail in the beginning?

33………………………………………

What material was used for insulating cable across the sea?

34………………………………………

What was used by British pioneers to increase the weight of the cable in the sea?

35………………………………………

What dis Fisherman mistakenly take the cable as?

36………………………………………

Who was the message firstly sent to across the Atlantic by the Queen?

37………………………………………

What giant animals were used to carry the cable through the desert?

38………………………………………

What weather condition did it delay the construction in north Australia?'

39………………………………………

How long did it take to send a telegraph message from Australia to England

40………………………………………